Lessons from abroad

Nearly 12 years after being mostly leveled in a cataclysmic earthquake, this port city halfway around the globe has a glittering new skyline, a model for New Orleans as it negotiates the early stages of recovery from an equally ravaging disaster.

One of the surest signposts of Kobe's revival: The population recently topped its 1995 level. And visitors unfamiliar with the city's pre-disaster streetscape would have a hard time detecting evidence of the quake's wrath. Even a local has to look closely to spot the odd reminder of the quake: a group of vacant lots, patched seams on a stucco wall.


Because Kobe is comparable to New Orleans both in size and in the extent of devastation it suffered, the two cities have forged an informal cultural alliance, one that has brought Japanese disaster experts to Louisiana to study the post-Katrina challenge and that more recently led a delegation of New Orleans civic leaders to spend a week in Kobe and elsewhere in Japan.

from the Times Picayune

rebuilding Kobe graphic